Castleford Tigers developing a winning mentality

Tony Harber

Winning without being at your best is a trait associated with champion teams and Castleford Tigers showed they are developing the ability in their 34-22 win against Widnes when they blew hot and cold.

Tigers head coach Daryl Powell admitted his team were not at their best in their latest game, but was pleased with the way the players found a way to win - more comfortably than the final score would suggest.

He said: “It was a tough game and they came at us a fair bit and played well for large periods.

“But ultimately I thought we were too good for them once we got on the front foot in the second half and scored some pretty smart tries.

“I don’t think we were at our best, but you are not always going to be at your best and we did a good job to win the game.

“It’s something you look for in your teams when you’re coaching that you have an ability to get the job done.

“It’s not always going to go your way and sometimes you have to battle your way out of difficult situations.

“We were down at half-time and I thought we responded really well when Justin Carney got sin-binned and we took advantage of the little bit of space that was created with one less player on the field.

“We did really well in that period. Luke Dorn’s pace was great for us and the way he finished.”

Powell agreed there were positives and negatives to be taken from the game.

He added: “There were some really good efforts with the ball.

“I thought we were a little bit scratchy in the first half and didn’t quite get our structure how we wanted to and couldn’t quite put them away in terms of scoring points.

“But in the second half we built ourselves a pretty healthy lead, which ultimately was good enough to win the game.

“We defended the line well at the end of the first half when we had to work hard for each other. It was disappointing to let a couple of quick scores in near the end, but for the main part we defended okay.

“There’s some areas there we need to improve and that’s something we’ll be working on this week before we play Hull KR.”